Chris Juby, a 30-year-old freelance web developer and director of worship at King's church in Durham, says it will take more than two years to reach chapter 22 of the Book of Revelation, with its forecast of the second coming of Christ.

He started last Sunday by condensing the 31 verses of Genesis chapter one, which traditionally starts with the appropriately pithy: "In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth." Juby supplemented this with a further 17 words in his opening tweet, staying comfortably within Twitter's 140-character limit.

He said that he aimed to send out a tweeted chapter every day, after feeling a personal need for something a little less wordy than the full text. He said: "It is my normal habit to read a chapter of the Bible each morning and I always read through from Genesis to Revelation. As I was coming to the end last time, I thought I needed a way of focusing my mind a little bit more on what I was reading. I already use Twitter to comment on my life and music, so I thought I would share my summaries."

Moral help will not always get a look-in, however, thanks to the Old Testament's preoccupation with geneaology. Yesterday's tweet, for example, was on telephone directory lines, reading: "Adam's line was: Seth, Enosh, Kenan, Mahalalel, Jared, Enoch, Methuselah, Lamech and Noah. Noah's sons were Shem, Ham and Japheth."

Juby, who was a student evangelist for four years, said: "The Bible underpins so much of our culture. People like Shakespeare and Dickens make casual references to what we would now regard as obscure passages of scripture. I hope this will inspire people to read the Bible for themselves."